In the Sorrento peninsula, famous for the Amalfi Coast, bell peppers are stuffed with a mixture of eggplant, olives, capers, bread, basil, and parsley. We enjoyed this humble but tasty vegan antipasto at Lo Stuzzichino. It is a bit of … Continue reading Peperoni imbottiti alla Sorrentina (Stuffed Bell Peppers alla Sorrentina)
Scallops were on sale if bought by the kilo (2.2 lbs), so I smoked some as an appetizer and cooked the remainder sous-vide to be able to keep them longer. But you can also prepare this dish using raw scallops. … Continue reading Pasta with Scallops and Bell Pepper
Most of the times when I’ve had paella in a restaurant or made it myself, it has always contained seafood. But there are also paella recipes without seafood, like this one from Alicante with rabbit and snails. Eva of KitchenInspirations … Continue reading Paella with Rabbit and Snails (Arroz con Conejo y Caracoles)
At seafood restaurant Angiolina in Pisciotta, south of Naples, I enjoyed a wonderful seafood and vegetable soup. Back home I made my own version. You can easily adapt it to what is available and seasonal, in terms of both seafood … Continue reading Seafood and Vegetable Soup (Zuppa Mediterranea)
This dish was inspired by something we had in a restaurant in Corsica last year: roasted eggplant, zucchini, and bell peppers, that are subsequently baked with a generous amount of cheese. The Sardinian pecorino I used for my own rendition … Continue reading Baked Vegetables with Cheese
This is how sea bream (daurade) was served to us in Corsica: cooked in the oven with some colorful vegetables. When ordering fish on Corsica, be careful about the price. On the menu this daurade was listed as 12 euros … Continue reading Oven-Baked Sea Bream (Daurade au Four)
We love risotto and make it quite often. The nice thing about this recipe for bell pepper risotto is that no flavor is lost because the bell peppers are cooked in the stock that will be used for the risotto … Continue reading Bell Pepper Risotto (Risotto ai Peperoni)
Rillettes are usually made from meat, cooked slowly in fat until tender enough to be easily shredded, and then mixed with the fat. When my friend Robert mentioned he’d been gifted some skate and asked me to prepare it, skate rillettes … Continue reading Skate and Beurre Noisette Rillettes with Roasted Peppers
Calamari and squid are both types of cuttlefish. You can use any type for this recipe. Squid can be cooked in two ways: either very short or very long. Something in between, and it will be tough. Since I was … Continue reading Pasta with Calamari and Bell Peppers
Pasta comes in many shapes. The most common include spaghetti, penne, tagliatelle, orecchiette, and lasagne. Apart from fresh pasta and dried pasta, one of the main distinctions is between ‘short’ pasta such as penne and orecchiette, and ‘long’ pasta such … Continue reading Choosing a Pasta Shape, Part 1: Penne with Bell Peppers and Olives
Sea bream is a lean flavorful fish, also known by its French name daurade or dorade (orata in Italian). It is often served in restaurants in the south of France, so here I paired it with ratatouille from that same region. Ratatouille … Continue reading Sea Bream with Crunchy Ratatouille and Flavored Brown Rice
I created this dish because I wanted to make something that was both very nutritious and also tasty. I don’t believe in ‘super foods’ (which is mostly a way to make you pay more for foods that aren’t necessarily more … Continue reading Brown Rice Pilaf with Lentils, Beef, and Bell Peppers
Blecs is a pasta shape from Friuli. Blecs are triangular, square or lozenge shaped fresh pasta, similar to quadrucci or maltagliati. I tasted them for the first time at Trattoria Ai Cacciatori in Friuli, where the blecs were made with nettles and … Continue reading Blecs with Nettles, Lamb and Crunchy Vegetable Ragù
It is time for another quick pasta dish. One of those that takes about as long as is needed to cook the pasta. It took me 22 minutes to cook this dish from start to finish, including taking all the … Continue reading Pasta with Sausage and Bell Pepper (Fusilli Salsiccia e Peperone)
I love it when a reader reports about having tried a recipe from this blog, and even more so when they post a picture on Stefan’s Gourmet Blog’s Facebook page. Jev Kuznetsov did something similar, as he started with my recipe … Continue reading Risotto al Polpo e Chorizo (Octopus and Chorizo Risotto)
After figuring out the best time and temperature to cook rabbit sous-vide, I wanted to put my new-found knowledge in practice to make a proper sous-vide rabbit dish. That’s when I remembered reading about cajun rabbit on REMCooks.com. As Richard’s … Continue reading Cajun Rabbit Sous-Vide
As a good patriot I’m looking for ways to eat more tomatoes, bell peppers, and cucumbers. And so I thought of a wonderful solution: gazpacho. This is a cold soup from Spain that is made from tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, … Continue reading Gazpacho
The idea for this rice salad with seafood came from Biba Caggiano, my favorite Italian cookery book author. This salad is brimming with tender morsels of tasty seafood, crunchy vegetables, a nice zing from the dressing, gherkins and capers, and a … Continue reading Rice and Seafood Salad (Insalata di Riso e Frutti di Mare)
Octopus cooked sous-vide and then finished on the grill is one of my favorites. Octopus and squid go well with bell peppers. It is so hot that I wanted to serve something refreshing, and so I thought: “Why not make … Continue reading Grilled Octopus with Roasted Bell Pepper Ice Cream
We love fajitas, Tex-Mex flour tortillas stuffed with chicken or steak, bell peppers, onions, salsa, and cheese. At least that’s how I like to prepare them. We usually have them with chicken, but I was curious to try them with steak. … Continue reading Sous-Vide Steak Fajitas
In a change of pace from a very involved preparation and a very sophisticated meal, in this post I’m going to show you how I cut bell peppers quickly and with zero waste. A lot of food is wasted. The statistics … Continue reading How to Cut a Bell Pepper
I had never heard of Jambalaya, but it looked delicious when I saw Shrim & Crayfish Jambalaya on REMCooks. (Kees had heard of it, because it is the title of a Carpenters song. Go figure.) I decided to try it, … Continue reading Shrimp Jambalaya
This is another dish that came out of the collaboration with Teun and Albert. I wanted Teun to try octopus sous-vide, and I remember how much I liked the char-grilled octopus at La Madia in Sicily. Although we ended up doing something different, our original idea was to do something along the lines of the octopus dish from La Madia. That dish featured a rock. Due to timing constraints (and also because the rock at La Madia wasn’t very tasty even though it looked great), we decided to go for a soft octopus sponge cake instead.
Recently, Paul of That Other Cooking Blog wrote about a microwave brioche. This is a trick that was originally devised by Ferran Adrià of El Bulli. A batter with a lot of eggs is siphoned into paper cups with nitrous oxide and then cooked for 30 seconds in a microwave oven to get a sponge cake. As octopus leaks a lot of juices when cooked, we thought it would be nice to reduce those juices to a thick octopus syrup and use that to flavor a sponge. We thought it would pair well with a bell pepper coulis, and when we realised our menu needed more vegetables we also included some oven-roasted romanesco (green cauliflower). Continue reading “Grilled Octopus with Octopus Sponge, Bell Pepper Coulis and Romanesco”
Next time I’ll be visiting the Italian region of Abruzzo I’ll have to watch out, because I’m cheating in this post. Every region of Italy has its own pasta shapes, and for Abruzzo this is the Spaghetti alla Chitarra, also called Maccheroni alla Chitarra. In other regions this type of pasta is called tonnarelli or troccoli.
Spaghetti alla Chitarra are thick square fresh egg noodles, made from semolina flour and with a thickness and width of 2 to 3 mm (1/12 to 1/8 inch). They are called “alla chitarra” because they are traditionally made with a guitar-like device, which has a wooden frame strung with metal wires. The pasta dough is first rolled out with a rolling pin, then arranged on top of the metal wires, and then a rolling pin is used to press the pasta through the wires and thus cut it. You guessed it: chitarra is the Italian word for guitar. The device helps to give the pasta a rough surface, ideal for sauce to cling to.
I don’t own such a device, but since I do own a tagliolini attachment for my pasta roller with a width of 2-3 mm, I figured I can cheat and prepare something very close to spaghetti alla guitarra using the attachment for tagliolini. To get square pasta, the thickness of the dough should also be 2-3 mm. Spaghetti alla chitarra should be served very much al dente, with a lot of bite to them, so it is important not to overcook them.
One of the traditional ways to serve spaghetti alla chitarra in Abruzzo is with a ragù of lamb and bell peppers, flavored with garlic and bay leaf, and that is what I dressed the spaghetti alla chitarra with. It turned out wonderfully and I will definitely make this again. The ragù is made with fresh tomatoes and has a very elegant taste. Continue reading “Spaghetti alla Chitarra con Ragù di Agnello e Peperoni (Fresh Pasta with Lamb and Bell Pepper Sauce)”
When I mentioned hot-smoked scallops, Conor was intrigued. And so we decided to make this as an appetizer before the lobster and couscous, combined with roasted peppers because that is such a lovely combination. You could also add pea puree to that, but since we were already having peas with the couscous we left that out. Now I’ve blogged about hot-smoked scallops and about roasting peppers separately before, but Conor made such great pictures that I just had to share them with you. And I have not told you about the combination before, so there. Without further ado, here is how to … Continue reading Hot-Smoked Scallops with Roasted Bell Peppers
Venison, bell pepper and paprika are a good combination that make for a very flavorful stew. If you can’t find venison, lamb is a good substitute. I served it with roasted parsnips and mashed potatoes. The recipe is very similar to the venison and bell pepper ragù I posted a few days ago. In fact, only the end of the preparation is different. Ingredients For 6 servings 900 grams (2 lbs) venison stewing meat, in cubes about 250 ml (1 cup) warm water or venison stock 3 red bell peppers 1 Tbsp hot paprika (or 2 tsp sweet paprika and 1 tsp … Continue reading Venison and Bell Pepper Stew
The pasta course of a recent dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant in Amsterdam, Bussia, was spaghettini (angel hair spaghetti) with a spicy ragù of venison and crunchy red bell pepper. I really liked the combination of flavors, and it inspired me to create this pasta dish as well as a venison stew about which I will post soon. It is not a classic Italian dish (at least not that I have ever heard of), but it is in Italian style. The use of paprika gives it a touch of Hungary as well. I started the ragù with cubed meat … Continue reading Spaghettini with Venison and Bell Pepper Ragù (Spaghettini al Cervo e Peperoni)
This is a quick and simple weekday pasta dish that came about when I wanted to make Penne with Bell Peppers and Salami, but only had pancetta available. You could also think of this as Penne all’Amatriciana with added bell peppers. This dish turned out to be better balanced than the version with salami, as that is a bit high in acidity. But the most important thing is that you get a lot of flavor for not a lot of work. Ingredients For 2 servings 2 red bell peppers 100 grams (4 oz) of pancetta, diced 150-200 grams (1/3-1/2 pound) … Continue reading Penne with Bell Peppers and Pancetta
I used to make this Italian-French fusion dish that I had invented myself on a regular basis, but hadn’t for a while as I was concentrating on more traditional dishes. I wanted to make something with lamb, remembered this dish and realised that I hadn’t blogged about it yet. So I made it again and decided to make it again more often since it is very flavorful. You can make this with any tender lamb such as lamb loin, lamb tenderloin or leg of a young lamb. Ingredients For 2-3 servings 300 grams (2/3 pound) boneless tender lamb 150 grams … Continue reading Pasta with Lamb, Vegetables, Honey & Thyme
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